Sunday, February 22, 2009

He's got a financial summit Monday and a big speech to Congress on Tuesday, so what better way for President Barack Obama to take a break than by watching daughter Sasha play basketball?

The president and first lady Michelle Obama took a motorcade from the White House to an elementary school in Kensington, Md., to watch their 7-year-old daughter play.

It was about a 20-mile drive from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to the school. The Obamas stayed for more than an hour at Kensington Parkwood Elementary School, located in a Maryland neighborhood.

The president, wearing khakis, and the first lady went for a low-key arrival. Soon after the family arrived at the school, only a small crowd of parents stood with children, some bouncing basketballs on the school's driveway. But people soon caught on — by the time the Obamas' were leaving, dozens were lined up along the driveway to see them depart.

The Kensington school isn't far from Sasha's school, the Sidwell Friends School in nearby Bethesda, where she's in the second grade. Older daughter Malia is a fifth-grader at Sidwell's middle school in the District of Columbia.

In a television interview earlier this month, Obama said Sasha decided she wanted to join a basketball team, sharing the love of the sport with her father. The president regularly plays the sport in his free time.